


pray for the thunder to pass me by

by icoulddothisallday



Series: where do we go now [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ableism, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Anxiety, Disabled Character, Disabled child, Implied Mpreg, Irrational Fears, Kid Fic, Omega!Steve, Single Parents, parenting is hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-23 22:04:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14942193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icoulddothisallday/pseuds/icoulddothisallday
Summary: Steve had made himself a promise, when Charlie was born, that he would be honest with her — that he would answer all her inevitable questions.A flashback/outtake from "sweet child of mine."





	pray for the thunder to pass me by

**Author's Note:**

> Many people were asking after Steve's POV or feeling confused about Steve's actions, so here's a little insight to what he's going through. This is set three years prior to sweet child, but his thoughts/feelings remain the same up until Bucky starts to prove these worries false. Special thanks to primarycoulours and WhatEvenAmI for prompting further thought on Steve :) 
> 
> Please see extended trigger warnings in the end notes if you are sensitive to issues around abortion or custody. These warnings applies to thoughts/feelings Steve has that are not rational or reflective of reality, but they're there.

 

“Papa?” Charlie calls. Steve’s pauses in the doorway and turns around. Charlie’s tucked up into her bed, pillows arranged to keep her aligned as she sleeps. She’s peering at him from under her blankets, expression a little nervous. 

“Yes, sweetheart?” Steve asks, turning around. She screws up her mouth and grips the blanket in her closed fists. Steve holds back a soft sigh. It’s late and they’ve both had a long day. Tuesdays are one of the days that Steve has classes, so Charlie gets picked up by Riley and goes to the pool, before coming home for homework and dinner. Steve doesn’t get home until after Charlie’s had her bath and done her stretches and is changing into her pajamas. It sucks for both of them, after so many years where it was just the two of them, hanging tight to each other. 

It’s been a rough week in general. Charlie’s doctor had told them she might need hip surgery in the next year or two, Sam’s been having a rough time and hadn’t yet gotten out of bed that day, plus Riley’s heat is approaching, which always gets everyone all out of whack. 

“Can you tell me about my daddy again?”

Steve’s hand goes tight on the doorknob. With a deliberate breath, he relaxes. He’s not sure if it will ever get easier to think and talk about Bucky. It’s all a coiled knot in his head, tangled together with the loss of his mother and every home he had ever known. But he had made himself a promise, when Charlie was born, that he would be honest with her — that he would answer all her inevitable questions. 

So he closes the door and goes back to her, sitting on the edge of her bed and stroking her messy curls away from her face. She looks so much like Bucky, she always has, with her dark curls and stubborn cleft chin. On his worst days it hurts to look at her, bringing up a confused tumble of grief and anger and longing and joy. 

“Of course,” he says softly. “What story do you want to hear?”

“Tell me from the beginning,” she says sleepily. “ _ Your daddy’s name is Bucky... _ ” she quotes. 

It’s her favorite way to hear about Bucky, never mind that she already knows all the things he’s going to tell her. But he never could deny her anything that was in his power to give, so he nods and begins, “Your daddy’s name is Bucky. He was my best friend for years and years. We met —”

“When you were my age,” she interrupts, eyes brightening a little. She just turned five three months ago. At her birthday she’d declared that this was the year that she was going to meet her very best friend ever. Then she’d rethought it and said that maybe she already had met her best friend; Shanika and Charlie had been inseparable from their first meeting. 

“Yes,” Steve agrees. “I was in kindergarten, like you are now, and Bucky was a first grader.” The story winds on from there, with frequent interruptions from Charlie to complete his thought or add a detail he’d forgotten to include. 

After her finishes the story of Bucky saving him from a particularly nasty bully by the name of Gilmore in middle school, he looks at the clock and tells her, “Alright, kiddo. It is way past your bedtime, time to get some sleep, okay? You have school in the morning.”

Getting Charlie to school is a nightmare that takes at least an hour — the school refuses to send an accessible bus, which means that Steve has to get her there on a regular bus, which takes an extra half hour, only to get to the school building and it’s twenty steps to the front door. Steve’s not sure if they’re going to do another year at P.S. 182 next year. They don’t give Charlie anything she really needs, but do insist on special education classes which she absolutely  _ doesn’t  _ need. 

“One more, Papa. Please?”

“One more,” Steve allows. “And then lights out.”

Charlie nods and fixes her gaze on her bedspread, looking like she’s bracing herself for something. “Why can’t I see him, Papa?”

Steve’s feels like he’s been kicked in the stomach, even though he’s been waiting for her to ask this question for months now — ever since she started school, really. That’s what all the books said — that she’d have more questions once she was around kids who had both parents in their lives. 

He takes a deep breath. Slipping off the bed, he crouches down, so he can look her in the eyes. He takes her hand in his and squeezes it. “That’s a really complicated question, Charlie. But I’m going to do my best to answer, okay?”

She nods, tucking her chin to her chest. 

“When I had you I made the decision not to tell your daddy. That was my choice. I made it for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I was scared.” It’s hard to say, but Steve has promised to give her the truth when she asks for it, and this is the most important truth. 

Her eyes go wide. “ _ You _ ?” she asks, sounding disbelieving. “But you’re not scared of anything, Papa.”

Steve smiles, always stunned and overwhelmed by her confidence in him. “Everyone is scared of something, sweetheart. And I was really scared your daddy would be mad. That he’d want really different things from me.” Specifically, teenaged Steve had been sure that Bucky would want him to have an abortion. That probably wasn’t the most realistic fear he’d had, but it had consumed him nonetheless. 

Bucky’s life was so very different than Steve’s in so many ways. Bucky lived the kind of life where kids got straight As and did extracurriculars and went to college and didn’t worry about money or getting a job or having some place to live. 

Bucky always tried his best to understand the ways Steve’s life was different from his, but sometimes he could be thoughtless. Sometimes he expected Steve to do things he couldn’t do — skip a shift to go to the arcade, cut class to get tickets for a concert that Steve couldn’t afford. He could be quick to judge people and their choices without thinking about how hard things could be.

Bucky didn’t mean to be cruel. He just expected things to be a certain way and he didn’t understand when they didn’t work out the way he thought. And Steve couldn’t stand it if him getting pregnant was just another one of those things. 

Steve can’t say all that to Charlie. He can’t explain that he’s still so frightened of it — that if they reconnected Bucky would ask  _ why didn’t you get an abortion?  _ That Bucky will judge him for being a single parent, that he’ll think Steve’s done a bad job raising Charlie when Steve has done the very best he could, even when every step forward had seemed impossible. 

He can’t explain how he worries that Bucky will think Charlie’s a mistake when she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him. 

And he knows that maybe he’s blowing things out of proportion a little — Bucky loves kids and always wanted a whole litter of his own, but Steve knew where that came in Bucky’s plan. It came after college and maybe graduate school, once he was mated and settled down. That’s when there were supposed to be pups. 

And those pups? Well. They were supposed to be perfect. 

Charlie  _ is  _ perfect, is the thing. Steve’s just not sure Bucky would see it that way. 

Steve takes a deep breath. This is more than he can say to Charlie. So how  _ does  _ he explain why they can’t see Bucky now? How can Steve explain something that he knows is at least partly irrational?

He thinks about it for a moment, what it would be like to call the Barnes’ up, to see Bucky and George and Winifred again. For Charlie to have a dad and grandparents. He wants that for her, he does. 

And then he imagines them saying they don’t want anything to do with her. He imagines them trying to take custody. 

He’s a fucking coward. 

Rubbing a hand over his face, he sighs. “I’m sorry Charlie. I want you to know your daddy, I just get scared.” 

“It’s okay, Papa.” She reaches out and touches his face gently. “I’ve got you and Uncle Sam and Uncle Riley and Grandma and Grandpa. It’s okay.” 

Steve closes his eyes and tries not to cry. 

She shouldn’t have to reassure him. He should be able to give her this. He can’t even completely explain to himself why he can’t. 

He presses a tender kiss to her forehead, breathing in her healthy pup scent. “You’re a good girl,” he tells her, “and I’m very lucky to have you as a daughter.”

She smiles and then yawns in his face. Steve laughs, a little tension leaving him. “Alright honey,” he says as he pulls back, “Bedtime for real now.”

She nods agreeably and lets him rearrange the pillow behind her back and between her legs. He gives her one more kiss for good measure. Turning on her nightlight, he switches off the lamp on her dresser and lets himself out. He collapses against the door as soon as it is closed, taking deep breaths in through his nose. 

He wonders if this will ever get any easier. He wonders if he’ll ever work up the courage to call the number he still has memorized. He wonders if he’ll ever be brave enough to give Charlie everything she deserves. 

He hopes so. He really does. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> TW: Steve recalls worries that he has that Bucky would have wanted him to have an abortion or that Bucky and his family would attempt to take custody of Charlie if they knew about her. Again, these are not real-world fears, though they feel very real to Steve.


End file.
